Slice of local history pops up

Saturday

May 21, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 21, 2011 at 11:00 PM

Megan Miller @meggwrites

BRIDGEWATER -- It's been nearly 30 years since the Braun family sold the Keystone Bakery, a Bridgewater landmark, major Beaver County employer and a family-run business since Louis H. Braun and brothers began managing operations there in 1926.

After the sale many members of the Braun family left Beaver County, and most of the memorabilia from the bakery's long history went with them. The collection, which includes everything from newspaper clippings to company marketing materials to the framed U.S. Constitution that hung on the bakery's office wall, ended up with Doug Braun, Louis H. Braun's grandson, who now lives in Connecticut.

Now, after three decades, the collection is returning to Beaver County, where Braun hopes it will find a permanent home with the Beaver Area Heritage Museum.

"I want it to be enjoyed by the public," Braun said in a telephone interview. "That's my intent here, to share it."

A FAMILY LEGACY

The roots of the Braun family's baking legacy were already established in Pittsburgh when three young brothers, Louis, Gustave, and Ernest Braun, made separate journeys from Morbach, Germany, to settle in Pittsburgh.

Louis, then 17, arrived May 4, 1909, on a steamship from Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, Doug Braun's research shows. In a record made on Ellis Island, the place of entry for many immigrants, Louis's occupation was listed as "baker."

The brothers had jobs waiting for them, Doug Braun explained. Their uncle, E.R. Braun, had founded Braun Baking Co. -- of Town Talk bread fame -- around 1889, and there the brothers learned the family business.

In 1926 Braun Baking Co. acquired Keystone Bakery from the Walters family, which started the business in the Beaver area in 1859. E.R. Braun sent his nephews to manage the operation, which was housed in a large brick building on Market Street in Bridgewater.

Three years later, in 1929, they split from Braun Baking and established the Keystone Bakery as an independent company, with the understanding that they would not compete with their uncle's company for the Pittsburgh bread market.

Agreeing to steer clear of the city market didn't hamper Keystone's growth. The company's territory quickly spread in the opposite direction, northwest into Ohio and south into West Virginia.

Doug Braun's grandfather Louis H. Braun became the company's president by the mid-1930s after Ernest Braun died and Gustave Braun left the business. Louis would continue to run the bakery for the rest of his life, Doug Braun said.

"He was a real baker," Braun remembered. "He'd walk into the plant every day and pick up a loaf of bread, and I can remember he'd just smell it. He could tell by his sense of smell if it was right or not."

By the mid-1930s the bakery had been outfitted with state-of-the art breadmaking machinery, and Louis H. Braun was so proud of the facility that he had a booklet printed to explain the mechanized process to school children and other visitors, Doug Braun said.

In 1936, the year the booklet was published, the Keystone Bakery was producing 14 kinds of bread -- everything from standards such as rye, white and brown bread to "Prun-o Wheat," a "natural mild laxative food made with a liberal amount of prune juice," it said. The bakery was also producing 10 kinds of rolls and coffee cakes and 18 types of cakes, cookies and pastries.

When the Braun family bought Keystone Bakery, it had eight delivery trucks. It would grow to operate 33 delivery trucks from the Bridgewater facility, and 22 more out of another distribution facility in Youngstown, Ohio, Braun said. The company employed about 175 people and its bake ovens ran 24 hours a day, five days a week. On two days, 12-hour pauses in production were allotted for maintenance.

The Keystone Bakery remained a family operation, with children and spouses of children becoming involved in different aspects of the business. Doug Braun's father, Louis E. Braun, moved his family to Ohio around the early 1950s to manage the company's Youngstown facility.

By the 1970s the Keystone Bakery had outgrown its production facility, which was largely still the original brick factory built by the Walters family in 1901.

"The family had to make a decision whether we were going to build a new bakery or sell the bakery and allow my dad, my aunt, my uncle and my grandfather to retire," Braun said.

They decided to sell. After that, the bakery changed hands a few times and eventually ended up with Stroehmann Brothers Co., which stopped production at the Bridgewater facility in 1985. According to an article from that time, about 70 employees lost their jobs.

But the building went on to anchor a redevelopment of Bridgewater. It was revitalized into Stone Point Landing, a space that now houses several medical and corporate offices and the Tinitique restaurant.

"Even though the bakery no longer exists, the building enjoys viable reuse and today houses a variety of businesses that employ Beaver Countians to this day," said Elaine Savoldi of Town Center Associates, the property manager.

Doug Braun hopes said he hopes that some of his bakery memorabilia can be housed inside its original home in the former bakery building. He and Tinitique partner Tony Pizzuti have collaborated on plans to display some pieces inside the restaurant this summer.

His ultimate goal, Braun said, is for the collection to be kept intact and accessible to the public in the Beaver area, where so many have memories of the Keystone Bakery and its bread.

"This area is a wonderful area," Braun said. "It's got such great history. And how it's evolved through time is something our children should all understand."

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